Yet those undulations are the last visible traces of a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland. A rath, as this type is known, typically consisted of a circular earthen bank and accompanying ditch, called a fosse, enclosing a domestic area where a farming family would have lived, kept animals, and worked the land. Thousands were built across the country, and thousands have since been ploughed out, built over, or, as here, simply levelled by centuries of agricultural use.

The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, surveyed in 1842, recorded this particular site clearly as a circular enclosure, which tells us that it was still legible in the landscape at that point, even if its days were numbered. By the time the site was assessed in detail, the bank and fosse had been substantially reduced, leaving only the faint swelling of the northern arc to hint at what had once stood there. The original 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, Volume 1: West Cork', published in 1992, captured this residual evidence before even that could disappear further into the grass.